Spaun, the most realistic artificial human brain yet

Share This article

A group of neuroscientists and software engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada are claiming to have built the world’s most complex, large-scale model simulation of the human brain. The simulated brain, which runs on a supercomputer, has a digital eye which it uses for visual input, a robotic arm that it uses to draw its responses — and it can pass the basic elements of an IQ test.

The brain, called Spaun (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network), consists of 2.5 million simulated neurons, allowing it to perform eight different tasks. These tasks range from copy drawing to counting, to question answering and fluid reasoning. At this point, you should watch the video below to get a rough idea of how Spaun works — and then read on to find out why Spaun is so interesting.

Now, the nitty-gritty details. Spaun has a 28×28 (784-pixel) digital eye, and a robotic arm which can write on some paper. Every interaction with Spaun is through its 784-pixel eye. The scientists flash up a bunch of numbers and letters, which Spaun reads into memory, and then another letter or symbol acts as the command, telling Spaun what to do with its memory. The output of the task is then inscribed by the robotic arm.

Spaun’s brain consists of 2.5 million neurons that are broken down into a bunch of simulated cranial subsystems, including the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus, which are wired together with simulated neurons that very accurately mimic the wiring of a real human brain. The basic idea is that these subsystems behave very similarly to a real brain: Visual input is processed by the thalamus, the data is stored in the neurons, and then the basal ganglia fires off a task to a part of the cortex that’s designed to handle that task.

All of this computation is performed in a physiologically accurate way, with simulated voltage spikes and neurotransmitters. Even the limitations of the human brain are simulated, as you can see in the video below, with Spaun struggling to store more than a few numbers in its short-term memory.

The end result is a brain that is mechanistically simple (2.5 million neurons isn’t really much to write home about), but which is surprisingly flexible. By implementing just a handful of very basic tasks, it’s interesting to see how complex behavior begins to emerge. There are some tantalizing hints as to how the brain evolved: starting with simple tasks, and then building upon and weaving them together to build complex functionality. In the video below, Spaun recognizes the pattern of a number sequence — the kind of question you would find on an actual IQ test.

Moving forward, the research team, led by Chris Eliasmith, wants to imbue Spaun with adaptive plasticity — the ability to rewire its neurons and learn new tasks simply by doing, rather than being pre-programmed. As for the ultimate end goal, Eliasmith is excited about Spaun’s prospects. “It lets us understand how the brain, the biological substrate, and behavior relate. That’s important for all sorts of health applications,” he says in an interview with PopSci. In testing he has “killed” synthetic neurons and watched performance degrade, which could provide an interesting insight into natural aging and degenerative disorders.

Spaun is built upon Nengo, a graphical open-source software package for building simulated neural systems. You can actually download the Spaun neural model, if you want to simulate your own brain — though I suspect it might require a little more processing power than your desktop PC.

Tagged In

Post a Comment

Torqueobama

Seriously jump the neuron count and host it on multiple co-located virtual servers around the world, and I’m ready to be uploaded…

Aus379

The discernible wait time between calculations would be too great for one single intelligence to function correctly.
I would suggest several emulated minds working with what ever local resources they have, and adding to a pooled intelligence.

spizzy dizz

The brain operates in such a highly parallel fashion though it seems like there would necessarily be some processes that could be simulated on separate machines and interact seldom enough that the communication delay wouldn’t be seriously inhibitory to performance…

And there’s a gaping chasm between simulating a brain and simulating a particular person’s brain. We don’t yet have a good way to emulate biological long-term memory electronically (though there’s progress: http://iopscience.iop.org/1741-2552/9/5/056012). Collecting all the slices to build a complete microscale connectome would take years with current tech, and that’s before actually mapping the connections (which current machine vision is terrible at).

Finally, if you want the simulation to react to events the same way you do, you’d also need to simulate volume transmission, modulation by glial cells, and parts of the endocrine system outside the brain (particularly adrenal hormones and neuropeptide Y).

This stuff is insanely cool, but we have a tremendous amount of work to do before mind uploading can be feasible.

Ian Reide

I want mu NOW.

http://www.facebook.com/tito.john.73 Tito John

I’m not sure why the I/O is as they have configured it. Without knowing anything except what I read here about the project, I would think that the artificial eye and robotic arm are more side shows to the central problem of figuring out how the brain processes information than anything crucial. Aside from seeming more Asimovian, does it make any difference if the input is pixels or punched tape?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

As far as I can tell, they’re just trying to make a brain that’s really, really human — all the way from processing vision, to actuating motor neurons that drive the arm.

Alan Keetswy

There’s an insane amount of information processing that the brain performs to be able to recognize visual signals, but as far as what type of input you give it, you’re right. It doesn’t particularly matter what kind you give it as long as it’s capable of interpreting highly complex input. That said vision is one of the most interesting because of it’s huge range of potential applications and the fact that humans rely on it so heavily.
Similarly, for controlling an arm there is a very difficult control problem that needs to be solved to figure out how to move each joint / muscle. In another version of these videos the arm is controlled by a signal that sent muscle activation values to 6 muscles. It’s a much, much harder problem than sending an (x,y) coordinate for the hand to move to. Again, though, the point is for the model to be able to handle difficult control problems, which could apply to any sort of system (like vehicle or randomly constructed robot), but for a human model an arm is best! :D

tbekolay

Yeah, the I/O is that way because we want it to be getting similar input and producing similar output as humans. They’re completely simulated though; there is no camera that gets input for Spaun (yet) and the arm is simulated and not actuating a physical arm (yet).

(Note: I’m part of the Spaun team.)

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Booo. I had a suspicion that it might be simulated, but I was hoping it was real.

Thanks for coming by to comment!

TedMeister

That would be awesome!

TedMeister

That would be awesome!

http://twitter.com/AnonKopimi Anon Kopimi

Everyone seems excited that man CAN do this but seriously neglects the issue if he SHOULD.

What happens when your research toy gets so complex that it demands stimuli?

What happens if it realizes you only created it for study and are completely able and willing to erase it if need arises?

zanadude

Then we come to the realization that we are no better than that machine. And perhaps the era of antiquated religions and superstitions that hold back our potential can finally come to an end.

nobody1961

A beautiful beginning by using an open source software app and expanding it to control mechanical functions. We will boldly go where man has never been able to venture before.

Ethical problems will arise if/when this man made creation reaches a semblance of self awareness.

Do we own a self aware machine, or do we implement Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics.

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2015 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.